Who am I?

I’m a, blogger and event/marketing/media consultant.
Blogging since 2002 and online since 1993 (I still remember my
Compuserve account number), I live in North London with my husband and
toddler, but was born in Cheadle.

Current interests: the planet, healthy living, cooking, Art Deco
ceramics, all flavours of CSI, sensible financial planning, social
media, virtual worlds and the arts in general. All this may change: a
woman’s prerogative, after all.

Ally McBeal - Review

So I watched the second episode of Ally McBeal (the thinking man's
Melanie Griffiths) because everyone I know has changed their allegiance
from ER to AMcB, due to careful cross selling on the night of the
penultimate ER.

I'm contractually bound to video something on a Wednesday
night and went for the second episode. The main question? Does Ally
McBeal do no work? She just runs around dealing with her
emotional life and those of everyone she knows. Gossiping with her
flatmate and having cappuccino-laden daydreams.

We have only seen Ally in court once so far, and just as she opened
her mouth her ex-boyfriend, (law-firm-style-partner rather than
sex-style partner) stepped into the breach, Sir Walter Raleigh of the
Law Courts, saving her from making an argument. Legal, of course.
Requested to show her teeth to the Judge? P-u-leeessee!!! Where I come
from that's some sort of harassment, surely…… Dental
harassment?

And have you seen Ally open a file? Apart from artfully shuffling
papers on the floor to show off her legs? Take a call from a client??
Ask her Tefal-headed secretary to get out some correspondence? She just
rushes from office to office exhibiting attention-seeking behaviour.

Also, a lot of time is spent in the toilets. Still unclear whether
they are unisex or there are two sets but everyone is very disinhibited.
Maybe it's a US thing? Cagney & Lacey also spent quality time
in the bathroom in the late seventies, but at least they went out and
arrested people afterwards.

Can't help feeling slightly jealous: it never happens to me that I
lose my job and five seconds later run into an old friend in the street,
who - looking at my legs rather than my CV - offers me a job (a
partnership, no less) on the spot.

And why hasn't she been sacked? In my office, there is a collective
sense that it is not OK to spend more than, say, 10% of your time on
personal stuff. And that's important items like leaking bathrooms, last
-minute pension contributions at the end of the tax year, and a really
good sale at Warehouse. She just has her inner-life… out.

Seems to me that Ally has some friends, too. Would you hire Bridget
Jones? Reference: "Inability to concentrate on the task in hand. Too
many personal phone calls". Jackie Pane (Does My Bum Look Big in This?)?
Reference: "Appears to have difficulty concentrating on clients needs
rather than her own".

If Ally McBeal is a role model for single women, then there wouldn't
be any single career women. There would be a huge queue of
single, well-clad, impeccably-heeled nymphettes signing on talking about
mens' inability to commit. You' d be able to get a low-cost manicure at
the DHSS. People would "share" in the dole queue. We wouldn't open the
Sunday papers anymore to read interviews with women who "chose" their
career over family life. There'd be an underclass of a jobless
thirty-something women wearing slightly outmoded (no cash) clothes
selling The Big Issue.

The truth is that Ally is not - in my book - a post-feminist chick.
It's cool to show some cleavage and simper if you get what you
want. The millennium mantra: say what you think, ask what you
want, be who you are: sisters aren't even talking about doing it for
themselves any more, they just are.